The present invention relates to a thermal transfer material. More particularly, it relates to a thermal transfer material favorably used for forming images or patterns by means of thermal transfer, especially a spacer for liquid crystal display panels and a dot spacer for switching devices such as touch panel.
Conventional methods for forming a spacer which is interposed between two substrates constituting a liquid crystal display panel and supports the substrates include a method of scattering glass beads as a common method. However, in this method it is difficult to uniformly scatter the glass beads, resulting in unevenness in the distribution of the glass beads.
Recently, there is proposed a method wherein a photopolymerizable resin layer is formed on a temporary support and dots are formed from the layer by photolithography, yielding a transfer sheet, and the dots on the transfer sheet are transferred onto a substrate for liquid crystal display panel, the dots transferred onto the substrate serving as a spacer (JP-A-7-152038).
Methods for forming a dot spacer for a touch panel and the like include a method using screen printing as a common method (e.g. JP-A-8-101740).
However, since the aforesaid conventional methods for forming dot spacers utilize photolithography or printing methods, they require large scale systems and troublesome operations.
In view of the foregoing, a main object of the present invention is to provide a means for simply forming a dot spacer.
This and other objects will become apparent from the description hereinafter.